Michael Ansel Wins the Twilio + Heroku Challenge

Congratulation to Michael Ansel, the winner of this week’s Twilio + Heroku Developer Challenge. Michael created not one but TWO submissions for this week’s competition, which required developers to build a Twilio application using Ruby and deploy to Heroku’s instant Ruby platform.

Submission #1: DukeNow – What’s Open Now?

The first is an application called DukeNow which allows students, employees, and visitors to the Duke University campus to find establishments that are open right now, simply by calling in.

As Michael says, in his submission:

Currently, the majority of those places are dining locations, but I am also adding the libraries and other campus services. In addition to building it into the Duke iPhone application, we’ve added a “call-in” option, so anyone can access the information, even without a mobile browser.

To try it out, simply call (866) 583-6913 with PIN code 4456-8772.

Submission #2: Twilio Ruby Development Tools

Michael also built a set of libraries and tools to ease development of Twilio applications.

“While the libraries are ruby-specific, the call simulation tool is self-contained and language agnostic. So far, I have built:“

TwiML response library with attribute and nesting rule validation

TwiML parser (into nested objects)

Auth Signature verifier with Rack middleware wrapper

TwiML processor; simulates a full phone call, returning Symbols that can then be sent to Test::Unit or RSpec, or to another application with an interactive interface

Web-based call simulator using all of the above libraries that allows one to interactively walk through a call and see both sides of the conversation as well as any errors

Michael – Here’s What You’ve Won

Not only did Michael win the sleek little Dell Netbook, he’s also been credited with $300 of Heroku instant Ruby platform credit to spend on databases, dynos, or anything Heroku has to offer!!!

New Category This Week: Lead Generation

The new category for this week is Twilio aps for Lead Generation… more on what that means, and ideas for what you can build in our next post. For now, check out the contest page for all the details and submit your Twilio app for lead generation when you’re ready. Good luck!